Holly Dunn, a country singer who wrote the hit “Daddy’s Hands” as a Father’s Day gift for her preacher father and whose song “Maybe I Mean Yes” provoked a national conversation about date rape, died on Monday in Albuquerque. She was 59.

The cause was ovarian cancer, said her nephew, Daniel Dunn, the mayor of Temple, Tex.

Ms. Dunn’s wistful “Daddy’s Hands” won two Grammy nominations (best female country vocal performance and best country song) in 1987, and her “Are You Ever Gonna Love Me” and “You Really Had Me Going” (both written with her brother Chris Waters Dunn and Tom Shapiro) reached No. 1 on the country charts, in 1989 and 1990.

Daddy's Hands - Holly DunnCreditCreditVideo by JasAlf5959

Those three also wrote “I’m Not Through Loving You Yet,” a Top 10 country hit for Louise Mandrell in 1984. Ms. Dunn recorded the duet “Maybe” with Kenny Rogers and sang on records with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.

She was named the Academy of Country Music’s top female vocalist in 1986 and the most promising newcomer by the Country Music Association a year later.

She also described herself as a pioneer in a mostly male-dominated recording industry because she wrote (often with her brother), produced and performed her own material.

“I think this gives me a real legitimacy, a genuineness,” she told The Associated Press in 1990. “I’m not just up there standing where they tell me to stand, singing what they tell me to sing.”

Her recording popularity peaked around 1991 after the release of the song “Maybe I Mean Yes,” which some critics interpreted as an oblique invitation to date rape, around the time that William Kennedy Smith, a nephew of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, was being accused of sexual assault by a 29-year-old woman whom he had met at a bar. He testified that they had had consensual sex and was acquitted.

“Maybe” included the lyrics “Nothin’s worth havin’ if it ain’t a little hard to get” and “When I say no I mean maybe, or maybe I mean yes.”

Warner Bros. Records withdrew the song from radio stations, a decision Ms. Dunn said she supported, although she also said that the lyrics were meant to be flirtatious only about accepting a date, not sex. She left the label in 1993.

“The subject of rape is an important issue that needs to be discussed, and if my song has served as a vehicle toward that discussion, then perhaps that is the silver lining to this controversy,” she said at the time.

“In some ways this is the best thing that could have happened to me,” she added. “But it’s not exactly the way I would have wanted to get press.”

Holly Suzette Dunn was born on Aug. 22, 1957, in San Antonio, the daughter of Frank Dunn, a Church of Christ minister, and the former Yvonne Campbell, a Texas Hill Country landscape artist.

She is survived by her wife, Melissa Taylor, and her three brothers, Chris, Jerry and Rodney.

Before earning a bachelor of arts degree in 1979 in advertising and public relations from Abilene Christian University, she first tasted songwriting success, according to “Country Music: The Encyclopedia,” as a college junior when a gospel song she wrote was recorded by Cristy Lane. Ms. Lane would soon be named new female vocalist of the year by the Academy of Country Music.

After graduating, Ms. Dunn joined her older brother in Nashville, where he was writing and performing as Chris Waters.

“She was instantly discovered by the whole city,” he recalled in a phone interview on Wednesday. “The sibling harmony is something that money can’t buy.”

Ms. Dunn was signed by MTM Records, and in 1986 her recording of “Daddy’s Hands” reached No. 7 on the country charts.

She continued to record in the 1990s. She also co-hosted a country radio show in Detroit and the “Opry Backstage” television show on the Nashville Network.

In 2003, she released “Full Circle,” her first gospel album, and retired from recording to paint full time and offer her work through the Peña-Dunn Gallery in Santa Fe, N.M.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B16 of the New York edition with the headline: Holly Dunn, 59, Whose Hits Included ‘Daddy’s Hands’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe